Sour Grapes

had just propositioned him. Judging from the peanut butter between his teeth and the white bread guck stuck to his gums, she assumed he had just finished his lunch. “You miss me, don’t you, baby? Been havin’ hot dreams about me?”
    “I assure you, Bates, I don’t. I might miss an infected hangnail, an abscessed tooth, an enormous pimple on my chin... but I don’t miss you.”
    She walked up to the desk, grabbed the sign-in clipboard, and scrawled her name across it. Not wanting the police department brass to know she was there, she usually signed a fictitious name. This time it was “Minnie Mouse.” Nobody, especially the worthless Officer Kenny Bates, actually checked.
    “Give me a call sometime, honey,” he said as she walked away, “and I’ll take you out. Wednesday is ladies’ night at Hooter Hollow. You can drink all you want for free, and we’ll watch the strippers. They can... ah, load my gun, and then we can go to my place and I’ll let you pull my trigger, if you know what I mean. What’dya say?”
    “I say that you are a wart on the buttocks of humanity, Bates.”
    “But you like me.”
    “I despise you.”
    “You want me.”
    “I loathe you. All women do, Bates. Haven’t you noticed that even nice ladies spit on you when you walk by?”
    They don’t spit on me. Nobody spits on me.”
    “Check out the back of your jacket sometime.”
    She chuckled as she walked down the hall, knowing that at that very moment, he would be twisting his spine out of alignment trying to see behind him. What a moron.
    Ahead, at the bend of the hall, was a pair of double stainless-steel doors. Dr. Liu’s autopsy suite. The M.E.’s office was around the corner to the right, but she was seldom there. Jennifer spent most of her time in the field or performing her examinations.
    Savannah swung the door open a crack and peeked in. Dr. Liu was standing at a steel table, scalpel in hand, wearing surgical gloves, greens, cap, and disposable paper booties over her sneakers. Her long, black hair was tied with a brilliant pink-and-purple silk scarf.
    A corpse was on the table, its chest open, major organs removed. Dr. Liu had Barbara Matthews’s heart on a scale and was dictating the numbers into a microphone that was suspended over the table.
    When she turned and saw Savannah, she tapped a pedal beneath the table with the toe of her shoe, turning off the microphone.
    “Hey, lady!” she said, “Did you bring me some chocolate goodies?”
    Savannah laughed. “No, sorry.” She held up the black plastic bag. ‘This definitely isn’t a delicacy.”
    “I thought you were stopping by to get the results of the Matthews examination.”
    “Well... since I’m here, I’d be very interested in anything you have.”
    She peeled off her gloves and tossed them into a biohazard waste can. “First, let me see what you have there.”
    Savannah handed her the bag. “Actually, for the record, it’s Dirk—not me—dropping this off... in an evidence bag.”
    She reached out and took it, giving Savannah a suspicious look. “And does Dirk know that he’s dropping this off to me?”
    “He will.”
    “Okay.”
    She glanced into the bag and made a face. “What is this mess?”
    “I suspect it’s the rest of the chicken. Would you take a quick look at it... when you get a chance, of course... and let me know if it died from natural causes?”
    “And what would you consider a natural way for a chicken to croak?”
    “If a wolf bit it.”
    “I see. And where did you find this mangled, half-rotten, disgusting... treasure?”
    Tied to a wolf s neck with a piece of twine.”
    Jennifer stared at her for a long moment, then shook her head. “Okay, I won’t ask. And I’ll check to see if it’s missing a gizzard. But you owe me so-o-o-o big for this one.”
    “Dirk will settle up with you.”
    “No way. His idea of payment is a Hershey’s Kiss. And, while I like them, this dead chicken thing is a Godivajob.”
    “I hear you. What have you got on Barbie?”
    Dr. Liu glanced at the table and a sadness crossed her face. “A perfectly healthy young woman who died a very unpleasant death.”
    “I’m sure falling off that cliff wasn’t very pleasant.”
    “She was dead before she went over the edge. There’s lividity along her left side. She was lying on it a while before the body was moved.”
    Then what was the cause of death?”
    “Her sinus cavities, esophagus, bronchial tubes and lungs were chemically